Under fire Smith the latest to jump ship from England's humiliated coaching staff

The dismantling of England’s discredited management continued on Thursday as attack coach Brian Smith resigned.

The move didn’t come as a surprise, even though he had barely a month left on his contract.

The Australian came in for savage criticism from certain players as part of the leaked reports into the shambolic World Cup campaign, but Sportsmail understands he considered his position untenable once Martin Johnson quit last Wednesday.

Gone: Brian Smith has resigned as England's attack coach

However, the former London Irish
coach is thought to have made his mind up on the strength of the
comments from members of the England squad.

Having been recruited by Johnson in
2008, Smith’s stint was ultimately frustrating. He came in having
overseen the Exiles’ transformation into one of the most adventurous,
expansive sides in the Premiership. Yet the former Australia and Ireland
fly-half was never able to impose his ‘good over evil’ attacking
philosophy, at least not with any consistency.

From the depths of the dour, stilted first half of the 2009-10 season —
partly caused by a tweaking of the laws — England did cut loose in
encouraging fashion for a period from June 2010 until early this year.

Revitalised by the inclusion of free
spirits such as Ben Youngs, Chris Ashton and Ben Foden and with Toby
Flood pulling the strings at No 10, a swagger and exuberance emerged, as
illustrated in grand fashion last November at Twickenham, when Youngs’
audacious dummy on his own line set in motion Ashton’s stunning try
against Australia.

Yet, that mood of freedom and
self-expression was lost and previous doubts about Smith’s work
resurfaced. There had been rumbles of discontent for some time from
within the squad, with complaints about an over- prescriptive, rigid
approach and too much structure and focus on detailed statistical
analysis.

All the doubts gave way to stark criticism in the player feedback reports which were exposed this week.

Shambles: The ramifications of England's awful World Cup are rumbling on

Among the devastating comments about
Smith were: ‘He simply doesn’t understand the game well enough’... ‘He
was way out of his depth’... ‘Smithy changes his mind all the time’...
‘He didn’t offer anything’... ‘When you start copying Romanian moves,
you know you’re in trouble.’... ‘I would be delighted if he went. Our
attack play was boring, uninventive, even schoolboy at times’.

Well, that last player’s wish has come true.

Smith plans to say his piece soon,
but in the meantime a short statement released on his behalf by the RFU
read: ‘I feel that England have made great strides in the last three
years and although the World Cup was a massive disappointment, we have
won 10 out of the last 13 games, including beating Australia
back-to-back and winning the Six Nations for the first time since 2003.’

What the players said about Brian Smith:

'He simply doesn’t understand the game well enough.'

'I would be delighted if he went. Our attack play was boring, uninventive, lacklustre, even schoolboy at times.'

'He didn’t offer anything. The players had all the ideas for strategy and all he did was write the players’ ideas on the board.'

'At
one stage it was Ben Youngs who was coaching. Ben would come up with a
strategy for how to run off the 9 and off the base of the ruck. Should
he have had that responsibility when he’s playing in his first World Cup
and trying to get his form back to where it was before his operation?'

'Smithy
changes his mind all the time. In one preview he said we should scrum
and maul them off the park, then in the review he said "why were you
scrummaging them to death?"'

'He was way out of his depth.'

'We went away from what we did well. He selected an unexciting backline which likes to run over people.'

'If
we’d got to the semi-finals or final it would have papered over the
cracks and the worst thing is Brian Smith would have stayed in his job.
It might be a blessing.'